1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to communication apparatuses, communication methods, and communication systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
One known form of communication systems, in which a plurality of communication apparatuses exchange data, is a video (television) conferencing system that implements remote conferencing by making use of a communication network. The video conferencing system allows conferencing between remote locations in a fashion analogous to that in actual conferencing by converting an image and voice (e.g., speech) in a conference room where one party of conference audiences and the like of the remote conference is, into digital data using a communication apparatus (conference terminal) of the remote video conferencing system, transmitting the digital data to a communication apparatus of the other party, displaying the image on a display in a conference room of the other party, and outputting the voice from a loudspeaker in the conference room of the other party.
Such a video conferencing system typically uses a microphone to capture voice of conference participants and uses a camera to acquire an image of the same. However, because a camera has its angle of view, an image of conference participants out of the angle of view of the camera cannot be captured. As a method for solving this problem, a method that uses a panoramic camera capable of capturing a panoramic image of 360-degree surroundings is known. Meanwhile, a normal microphone is not directional and therefore undesirably collects surrounding sounds other than speech of a participant. As a method for solving this problem, a method that uses a microphone array to make a sound-capture area of the microphones directional, thereby reducing sound collected from surroundings and clearly recording the speech of the participant is known. For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2007-274463 (Patent Document 1) discloses a method for forming, by a conference terminal, a sound collection beam in accordance with a selected pattern of participants' arrangement. Japanese Patent No. 5028944 (Patent Document 2) discloses a technique of detecting a direction, in which a speaker is, using a microphone array formed by arranging a plurality of microphones in an array and causing a camera's image capture direction to track the direction.
A method for implementing more-realistic video conferencing may be provided using a combination of the above-described panoramic camera and the microphone array by capturing an image of an entire conference room with the panoramic camera and, when a speaker is in the room, automatically displaying a close-up video of the speaker and steering a microphone's sound collection area toward the speaker. However, while this combination allows displaying a close-up video of the speaker and steering the microphone's sound collection area toward the speaker, displaying a cropped image of only the speaker and outputting voice of only the speaker are not always desired by a communication apparatus of the other party of the conference. Hence, this combination is disadvantageous in that it is difficult to provide an image and voice that are desired from the communication apparatus of the other party.
Therefore, there is a need to provide a communication apparatus, a communication method, and a communication system capable of (or for) providing an image and voice that are desired from a communication apparatus of the other party in mutual communication.